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Comment by pwg | Hacker News Reader

Do this from a Linux command line:

  nslookup anywhereintheworld.com

The result will be:

  ** server can't find anywhereintheworld.com: NXDOMAIN

Which means that domain happens to not exist, so no one received a password reset for your account.

You'll have to contact yahoo (however you do that) to get this fixed. Posting here does not count as "contacting yahoo".

Also, take this as a lesson learned. When you let someone else handle your email for you, you live and die at that others whim.

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Its not literary "anywhereintheworld.com". Its some domain name I made up when I signed up 15 years ago. Its taken now. It has some custom domain-parking-spam on it. Whois gives something like "lksjdfoiuwerkjsd@somespammerhidingcompany.com" as the contact email.

You can register anywhereintheworld.com, setup a smtp server, confirm your account, change your Yahoo! alternative email, and unregister anywhereintheworld.com .

Other possibility is to stop using Yahoo! email, like I did, when they erased all my old emails twice because I didn’t login for 3 months.

So if you know what the domain name is (obviously, how else would you know it is now taken), then why the obfuscation with "somewhereintheworld.com"? Why not just post the actual, albeit fake, domain?

Note, unless:

  1) an smtp server is actually listening at the domain (have you tested this?);
  2) is configured to receive any address at the domain;

Then your confirmation emails from yahoo are getting refused by the other domain. So there is no guarantee the other domain has, or does not have, your reset emails. In any case, unless you want to try to buy that other domain just to get your own reset emails, you'll need to contact yahoo support, they are the only ones who can help you now.

[edit: formatting]

> Why not just post the actual, albeit fake, domain?

Privacy. The owner of that domain has my real name now. I dont want it linked to my HN account.

> an smtp server is actually listening at the domain

How would you test that?

> is configured to receive any address at the domain

I sent an email from gmail to that domain. I did not get a bounce. So I guess it is.

> > an smtp server is actually listening at the domain

> How would you test that?

telnet domain.com 25

And see if you get an SMTP response from a server. It would look something like this:

220 domain.com ESMTP Postfix

After you connect, if you want to see if your email address is active, you can try this (lines beginning with numbers are the server responses, you type the non-numbered lines):

  helo yahoo.com
  250 domain.com
  mail from: afakename@yahoo.com
  250 2.1.0 Ok
  rcpt to: yourfakeemailname@thefakeyahooname.com

And you'll either get back:

550 5.1.1 <yourfakeemailname@thefakeyahooname.com>: Recipient address rejected:

250 2.1.5 Ok

A 550 response means that your fake email address is not setup to receive email. A 250 means that it is accepting email at the rcpt to: address.

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